Nightly Decisions
by Amles80
Summary: Matthew/Mary from an angsty point of view. Married life turned out not to be what he expected.  Mentions Pamuk and Carlisle with references to possible dubcon/noncon.


"I'm so sorry, Matthew…"

Mary's voice, Mary's strong and proud voice, was little more than a whimper and Matthew wanted desperately to comfort her. He reached out to take her in his arms, then he realized that that would be the wrong thing to do.

Instead, he moved away from her a little, trying to give her more space. He fought back the urge to sigh heavily, clenching his fists tightly under the sheets.

"But I told you," he said, "I'm nothing like… _him_. I won't make you do anything you don't want to …"

"What if I don't want to do _anything at all_?"

Matthew had, something he could admit to himself if not to Mary, hoped that his wife would want to do quite a few things with him, in the safety and comfort of their marital bed, but that had turned out not to be the case.

"I don't understand," he confessed. "You have kissed me before…"

"Yes," she replied and if he wasn't mistaken there were tears in her voice. "I know! Because I love you, and I thought I could learn to like it, and I thought… Well, I guess I didn't think at all, really! If I had thought about it…"

'It', she said, with such aversion in her voice that it made Matthew feel guilty even when he hadn't done anything. Well, nothing but kissing her, talking softly and happily to her, caressing her gently…

Who would have thought? The beautiful, fiery Mary, so cold and scared!

"If only," he said, feeling exhausted, "if only I hadn't regained my ability to walk and… and everything…"

"Don't say that," his wife protested, and it wasn't darker in the bedroom than that he could see that she was looking sort of affectionately at him. "Don't say that. You would have blamed yourself for not being able to produce an heir – I know you would – but this way, it is my fault."

Matthew sighed. What was he supposed to say to that?

"Please don't hate me," she whispered.

"Don't say that!" Hearing her say such things was worse than anything else. "I love you, my darling."

"I know, that is precisely what worries me."

Again, he only sighed. What could he say? For each day he knew less and less what to say to her. It wasn't like he believed that making love was everything there was to a marriage but he hadn't been prepared for the complete lack of physical affection and closeness.

Their wedding night had been a disaster. There was no other way to describe it.

The wedding itself had been wonderful enough, but when they finally were alone and he took her in his arms, expecting her to respond to his touch, she became stiffer than the barrel of a rifle, and soon enough she pushed him away and, to his horror, burst into tears.

He could only assume that it was that Pamuk's fault, or Carlisle's. She had said that the Turk hadn't forced her, but the experience had obviously been unpleasant to her… One of the other two men who had kissed Mary before, or both of them, had damaged her, perhaps irrevocably, and made her shy away from his touch and look at him as if he was going to do terrible things to her.

And all he wanted was to love her. To _love_ her, for Christ's sake, never to hurt her!

But Matthew Crawley was nothing if not patient. He wouldn't dream of insisting that he _had_ to 'have his way with her', and he told her so.

"Thank you," his wife said when he told her that he wasn't going to force her, and that was quite possibly the most terrifying two words he had ever heard anyone say.

He didn't want to be _thanked_ for something like that.

It was best, they agreed on it silently without discussion, not to talk about it. Matthew settled on being her friend, at least for a while. Time and patience, he thought, was going to make her change her mind.

But when months had passed and Mary still hadn't kissed him again – oh, how he missed their happy engagement time, although he was quite ashamed of himself for thinking it because it couldn't have been such a happy time for Mary, but an exercise in preparation for imagined hardships to come – then he approached her about it again.

She blushed and cried a little, but told him – she was honest at least, he had to give her that – that she was sorry, but the mere thought of acting like a _wife_ made her shudder and she just _couldn't._

As hard as it was to understand, what could he do?

At one point, she even hinted that she wished Lavinia hadn't died, which, for some reason angered him. Maybe it was true that she wouldn't, as Mary put it, have had anything against 'the physical side of things', but they would never know that, would they? And Mary was the one he had always wanted.

"I don't care about _that_", he said. "I love you, that's all that matters."

It wasn't entirely true. He understood that it wasn't about him, not really – Mary would have reacted the same way to Carlisle, who perhaps wouldn't have been so accepting, but still; it hurt. He felt rejected, and he felt his desire for his bride, his beloved, burn and hurt like torture.

Sometimes, in privacy, he had to… It always left him with a bitter aftertaste. He knew enough not to believe in what he had been told as a school boy, that it could make his spine or even his brain wither away, but although it was a normal bodily need, it made him feel guilty to think about Mary – and who else was there? – when he took care of it.

It felt better not to try to do anything.

Once, she reminded him:

"I do have feelings for you, you know that."

Well, he supposed that he knew. Those feelings just weren't the way he had hoped. As time passed, he began getting used to the thought of never consummating their marriage. But kisses, simple touches, a quick hug every now and then – couldn't they have that much, at least?

Mary just barely tolerated it, at first. Then she began getting used to it, maybe even to like it – he got his hope up when she eventually began sleeping with him at night, cuddling a little. But as soon as his touches became a little too eager, she shuddered, like a frightened kitten.

There they were now, in bed together, but not, in fact, _together_.

Silence.

"Don't you ever want children?" he dared to ask, and at the same time she said:

"Do you remember when I was on my way to go to America?"

"Yes," he said, letting her escape his question. "I remember. Why, are you thinking of going there now instead?"

"I have been thinking," Mary replied. "For the reason you mentioned. Children. I do want a child, and not only because we're _supposed_ to have a son. I just don't want it… the normal way. So let's adopt a son, Matthew!"

Mary sounded more exited than he had heard her be in months, but as wonderful as it was to hear her voice like that, he was shocked, shaken.

"But Mary, darling… I don't see how we can, it wouldn't be…"

If it had been that easy, Matthew thought, Robert would have adopted a son years ago and the estate could have stayed in the family without any need for Mary to marry the heir.

"No, but think about it!" Clearly, Mary had already thought about it. "If we go away and stay for about a year – or even less, we could always write while we're there and say that I was pregnant before we left England… Nobody would know, if we had a baby when we came back, that he wasn't our own."

Matthew sat up in bed and she mirrored the motion. Her eyes were glowing in the darkness as she looked at him, as if she knew that he could never deny her anything that she truly wanted. Wasn't there longing in her eyes, longing for a child?

"Darling," she said, and the word was oddly bittersweet to him. "You want a child too, don't you? You are such a good, kind man, Matthew, with so much love to give. Don't you think you would love a little boy who was given to you to raise and protect, even if I hadn't given birth to him?"

He closed his eyes and let his face meet the palm of his hands, rubbing his eyes.

"I don't know, Mary… Look, I need to go out for a while."

"But it is in the middle of the night! And everybody is asleep…"

"I can get dressed by myself," he said, thinking for a second about how he used to live when he was younger.

"It is raining…"

"I don't care," he said, "I need some fresh air."

It was dark outside. The rain was pouring down slowly from the dark sky without stars to be seen, and the wind was slightly chilly.

Never, ever was he going to let Mary see him cry. No, he was going to spare them both that. They were married now, for better and worse, and he had to deal with the situation. Deal with it. That didn't mean that it didn't make him cry, when no one saw, to know that his wife could barely stand to give him a peck on the cheek and let him hold her hand.

Still, she smiled at him often, when they were relaxed and warm and only thought about their old friendship…

So, go to America and find a child there to bring home? Something about the idea appealed to him, although he knew that it was wrong on several levels. He knew that there were unwanted children in the world, and if they could save one of them… Mary was right, he supposed, he had love to give to a child if it was given to him.

He looked up at the night sky and let the rain fall down on his already wet face, wishing that he could grow wings and fly away, that he could do _something_ to let the terrible pain go away.

But he couldn't. 'Make her smile!' was his motto, and so he decided to go with Mary wherever she wanted to go and do whatever she wanted him to do.

And perhaps one day she would want to kiss him again. If not, well, then he would just have to live with that.


End file.
